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Carrot Fritters
Boil several good-sized carrots until very tender; press through a sieve and season to taste with butter, salt and pepper. Shape the carrots in small, flat cakes, and sauté in butter.
A four-line recipe that leaves out the one thing that makes it work: carrot purée alone will not hold a cake shape. A binder and dry heat are what stand between this and a pan of orange mush.
- Dry the puréeDry the puree -- Boiled carrots carry a great deal of water. After sieving, return the puree to a dry pan over medium heat and stir until it stiffens and pulls away from the sides, several minutes. The original says nothing about this, and without it the puree will be too loose to shape.
- BinderThe recipe gives none, and puree alone will not hold together. A beaten egg and a spoonful or two of flour or fine breadcrumbs per cup of puree will bind the cakes; without something of the kind they fall apart the moment they are turned.
- "Press through a sieve"A food mill or ricer does this in seconds; a food processor tends to leave the puree loose and wet. If you use a masher, expect a coarser cake, which is no bad thing.
- Chill before shapingSpread the seasoned purée on a plate and refrigerate 30 minutes. Cold cakes hold their edges in the pan and absorb less butter.
- Sauté heatMedium heat in clarified butter or a butter-and-oil mix. Whole butter alone over the higher heat these cakes want will brown and burn before the crust sets.
- SeasoningModern carrot varieties tend to be sweeter than older ones. A pinch of nutmeg or a squeeze of lemon keeps the fritters from reading as dessert.
- Yield"Several good-sized carrots" is roughly 1 to 1.5 lb, giving about 2 cups of purée and eight small cakes, enough for four as a side.
Carrot fritters belong to the thrift end of the vegetable chapter, where a cheap root and a little butter were made to stand in for something richer. Carrots kept all winter in a cellar or sand box, cost little, and were often treated in cookbooks of this period as a near-sweet vegetable, turning up in puddings and pies as readily as in soups. Frying a sieved vegetable into small cakes was standard practice across late nineteenth and early twentieth century household cookery, applied equally to parsnips, potatoes and cold leftover greens, and it served the same purpose each time: it gave a plain boiled vegetable a browned crust and made a second appearance at table look like a new dish.